Long time lurker, just registered to reply to this post…
I think I can beat that. Here’s my story:
I entered college as a music performance major at one of the top conservatories in the country, and things were pretty good for the first semester. However, I was one of the few unlucky freshmen that got stuck in the studio where the professor just lost his shot at tenure, and would be leaving at the end of the year. At least, that was the way it was supposed to go. In reality, the guy had some sort of breakdown between semesters, relating to the tenure decision and some sort of affair he had with a girl that was in his studio previously (the details are pretty vague). So, he didn’t show up until the end of the second semester, leaving me pretty much abandoned (for those of you that don’t know, the relationship with a private teacher is probably the single most important part of music school). The administration tried to fix this by bringing in various replacements, but the few lessons I had were contradictory and impersonal. It didn’t help that I started the semester in kind of a personal rut. Adding to that, I had to to deal with a true asshole of conductor for the first time, and music theory became increasingly more tedious. So, when my teacher finally showed up at the end of the semester, and saw that I had even fallen behind a bit while he was gone, he told me to quit. Bastard.
The administration was fairly considerate, and let me postpone my freshman jury for another semester. I was taking on rather substantial student loans (for a career that isn’t exactly lucrative even in the best case) and now I was behind. And by this time I didn’t even want to touch my instrument. While I was undoubtedly screwed over, I rationalized that since I couldn’t deal with such problems now, I probably wouldn’t be able to deal with the inevitable pressures that come with being a musician. So, I decided to transfer out.
After the second year first semester, where I took a good distribution of mid-level natural and social science classes to prove myself, I officially transferred from the Conservatory to the College and declared myself a Biology major. Luckily I had a good number of AP credits from high school to fall back on, so I wasn’t behind at all. In high school, music was my first choice for college, with engineering and biology next, so it wasn’t that huge of an adjustment for me at least.
Unfortunately, I kind of fumbled my second semester that year – my goals were pretty much “I should get an undergraduate degree, because, umm… I’m supposed to, I guess”. By now (my third year) I’ve started to get some focus… I had a chance to work in a biochem lab this summer, and I’ve started laying out plans for graduate school and a career. Right now I’m leaning towards something like biomedical engineering or biotech – some sort of applied science.
Right now my biggest regret is that I have to almost nothing but upper-level bio from now on (9 credits next semester :eek: ), meaning I’m gonna miss out on a lot of interesting electives. So, yeah, while I wish I could go back and not waste my first year of college and last years of high school, I’m not unhappy with where I am.
Back to your case…
You plainly like the geology itself, and are quite successful there. Don’t transfer because of a major’s co-requisites. Every major has a requirement that someone hates – how many med students enjoy and succeed in organic chemistry? Sure, the intro physics sucks for you, and things will probably be the same for the second semester. But I’d also guess that the geophysics will work out much better for you, since it directly connects to the topic you’re interested in.
My advice to you? Don’t change majors because of a single crappy requirement, and definitely don’t change without a very good idea of what else you’d want to do.